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Two machine quotes, two currencies: which is cheaper?
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#Taiwan machine tool exports#TAMI#machine tool prices 2026#CNC machine lead times#Taiwan vs Japan machine tools#China machine tool export controls#reshaped-v3

Two machine quotes, two currencies: which is cheaper?

Sadaf Masood

You cannot tell from the two numbers on the page, and neither can the builders. Convert both quotes at one dated fixing, write that date on the comparison, and then ask each builder which rate its own price assumes and how long it will hold it. On a machining centre the currency is worth more than the discount either of them will offer you: the dollar bought 162.71 yen on 1 July, 154.04 on 11 September and 158.85 today, a swing of about five per cent in each direction inside twelve weeks.

Five per cent of what, in money, is the part worth fixing in your head. Taiwan exported 3,613 machining centres in the first seven months of this year for US$322.5 million, which is US$89,271 a machine on the maker association's own table. Five per cent of that is roughly US$4,500, appearing and disappearing on a quote nobody has revised.

The number to carry into the negotiation

India bought 459 Taiwanese machining centres in those seven months for US$30.1 million, an average of US$65,628 a machine. That is the figure to have in front of you, because it is what the same builders accept for the same class of machine from a buyer paying comparable freight. A quote well above it is not automatically wrong, but it needs a reason you can name: a bigger table, a fourth axis, a spindle you specified, a longer warranty. If nobody can name one, the gap is a margin assumption rather than a specification.

Ask the Taiwanese builder to date the exchange rate behind its dollar price and hold it for ninety days. Its costs are in New Taiwan dollars, which have been far steadier than the yen, so it has room in that request that it will not offer unprompted.

Why the Japanese quote will not chase it

Because the constraint on a Japanese builder this year is the order book, not the margin. Japanese machine tool orders have run above ¥120 billion a month for seventeen consecutive months, as this site set out earlier, and a builder with a full book holds price and stretches delivery rather than discounting. Expect the older shape, then: Taiwanese cheaper and sooner, Japanese dearer and later, with the size of "cheaper" set by the fixing on the day you sign.

The Taiwanese association has been saying the opposite, and it is worth knowing why. Its July report states that the 20 to 30 per cent price advantage Taiwanese machines used to hold under Japanese ones "has completely disappeared", and attributes it entirely to currency: since 2021 the New Taiwan dollar has depreciated 13.6 per cent against the US dollar while the yen has depreciated 53.1 per cent, a gap of nearly forty points. That is a statement about a five-year trend written at a particular rate. It is not a statement about the rate on the morning your quote was issued, which is the only one that sets your price.

One practical way to use it: ask the Japanese builder for the same machine priced in yen and in dollars, and compare the two at today's fixing. If the dollar figure implies a rate well above the current one, you have found the difference, and it is a conversation about arithmetic rather than about discount.

If there is a third quote, and it is Chinese

Then one line goes into the delivery clause that the other two quotes do not need. Since 30 June, in the Taiwanese association's description of the rule, mainland China requires prior declaration and approval before high-precision and dual-use machine tools are exported. A standard three-axis vertical is unlikely to be caught by it. A five-axis machine or a precision grinder may be. Put it in writing: who files the application, how long it takes, and what happens to your deposit if approval is refused.

If what you actually need is the part rather than the machine, the currency argument is better had with the factories than with you. Send the drawing, the quantity and the tolerance class to Vesprr Workshop and the quote comes back with a validity date on it.

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